A place for all my random thoughts

Sabbath Observance and Family Councils

The LDS Church has put a big emphasis recently on keeping the Sabbath holy. Last week in our combined third-hour class, our bishopric shared many thoughts and counsel on the importance of the Sabbath, attending church, and in particular partaking of the sacrament. They finished the lesson by asking us to each choose one thing that we could do to make the Sabbath holy in our lives.

That evening my wife and I discussed it, and decided that we wanted to do something to help encourage reverence during Sacrament meeting (the first hour in LDS worship services). We decided to have our kids help us decide specifically what we could do, so that it would be a family decision (and would hopefully help our young kids be more inclined to follow along). so the next day we gathered the kids together and talked to them about what we could do to be more reverent at church.

while I had a number of ideas, it was actually our 8 year-old daughter who came up with the idea that we settled on. She suggested that we all take our journals and take notes during the sacrament meeting. And that seemed to me to be the right solution. So today I took the girls (Mom stayed home with the baby and a sick boy), and after the ordinance was over, I handed out their journals and got my own out.

For myself, I got a lot more out of sacrament than I usually do. Not just from what was said, but from thoughts and impressions that came to me during the talks. But what was really powerful to me was seeing my 8 year-old paying close attention to the speakers and writing out a couple pages of notes. Here is a sampling:

– God knows and cares
– God will help us
– God gave us apostles
– And the apostles are like spies

(That last one was referencing a comment about how the apostles can act similarly to an army’s spies, who watch the movements of the enemy and are able to advise the army on how to counter the enemy’s actions).

Now, I don’t know how well this is going to go once we have the baby back in the mix–we may have to make adjustments and/or try something else. However, I have been learning about the need to counsel together as a family, and I felt that here was one instance where we had done just that, and God blessed our efforts.